Making History

I have been thinking about education, online life, students and teachers, and ethics quite a bit reciently.  And I am probably going to go out on a bit of a limb here, and put forth a more radical version of what I think than maybe is true.  But I am reacting against what seems to me too much fear, too much separation between online life and real life, and the sense that if adults are too afraid or two overprotective of online stuff, then students will very rightly not feel that we get it, that we understand what is important, and what it all really means in their lives.

Before I set this out, I do want to start with some basic things.  I am not saying that students and teachers should not have privacy, or that students and teachers should not have separate lives, or that teachers do not need to be aware of issues of power in their interactions with students.  All of those things are important.  But they were important before the internet and they will continue to to be important regardless of what policies we do or don’t have about facebook, or email, or any electronic forum.

I feel that my online life is an extension of my life.  And it is not that different.  So the questions I want to ask about my interactions with students online are the SAME questions I want to ask about my interactions with students at Stanford Shopping Center, on University Ave, as members of the alumnae association, and in the larger community in which we all live.

So, if you don’t want me to be friends with students on facebook, what does that do to the fact I live in a neighborhood with two students living within blocks of me.   And I am friends with a parent who has a daughter in my class. Do I ignore that relationship?  Of course not.  I want to question my interactions with this student and this family to ask if I am being fair, if I am giving some advantage to the child because of the relationship.  Of course I don’t want to do that. But that does not mean I am not friends, or that I must cut off some part of my life.

So, what is my solution?  I am not sure, but for me the key is to be thoughtful about all relationships, and not assume that something electronic needs its own set of guidelines just because it is electronic.  I have an online presence.  That is a public version of me.  And I behave in that online space the same way I do in person. So if a student feels comfortable making me a “friend” in that space, I will accept that friendship.  Just like when I see a student on University Ave and she comes up to me to chat, recognizing that friendship, I am happy to see her, and I feel that I am doing a good job as a teacher and as a person, and that friendship is no different (or is it?) than one that a student initiates online.

It is something to keep thinking about.

My first try with the coolest presentation tool I have ever seen. I love Prezi, and I can tell the more I use it, the more I will be able to do with it.

http://prezi.com/109393/

As we have worked our way through the first two days of Summercore 2009, I have been thinking about change.  In some ways, like Steve B. says in Chapter 8, I thrive on change.  But my love of change (the Lexus) is tempered by my love of many older things (those olive trees are great), and my capacity to change myself, or the way I work, seems very different for different things.

I love watching my collegues find new things to bring change to their work, because although there are certainly frustrations with all new learning, there are so many wonderful “ah-ha” moments that make up for any frustrations.  I saw a lot of that this afternoon.

My questions for myself have to do with big changes versus small changes in our curriculum.  I think we are, as a school culture, excellent at small or even medium sized changes.  At the level of the individual course, we are all constantly redesigning, evaluating, fine-tuning, and improving what we do, how we teach, and what we teach.  We do it almost unconsciously, I think, and it keeps us interested all the time.

But when it comes to organizing the questions around big changes, or small things that seem big, I am not so sure we are as nimble or thoughtful as we might be.  I was thinking today about all the very practical technical knowledge we get in summercore, and where is it in the Castilleja curriculum that students are getting that stuff.  Without computer classes, they have to learn about file sizes, the rule of three for saving, and all sorts of basic good computing practices in their classes, but we don’t really have a system for making sure that happens.  Don’t get me wrong, I think many of our students  do know how to work very effectively with technology, and they do learn many excellent skills integrated into all kinds of classes, but do we know that they all know what they need?  I am afraid not.  How do we fix that?

Personally, I have been thinking about change.  What is it that made me finally make a change I have known for years was needed?  I lost weight, and have seriously been exercising, now with the goal of running the Nike Marathon in October.  That’s right, me, running a marathon.  Who would have thought?  There are powerful personal things that drive an individual to change.  What drives an institution to make change in thouhtful ways, rather than reactive ways?  What do we ask students to do to bring change in their lives? Do we try to teach them not just what to change but how to change?

Many more questions than answers tonight.

Last year in history 8, Margaret and I did an assignment for the students to articulate the views of the Patriots and the Loylists at specific points in the revolution using photos I took in Colonial Williamsburg and a fun comic making program called Comic Life.  But there were two problems.  Not everyone had Comic Life, so all work had to happen in class, and the resulting files were a bit difficult to deal with.  So I thought I would try out some of the free captioning services to see what the web 2.0 options are like for this assignment.

I was not too impressed with Bubblesnaps, because it produced a flash annimation, so I could not see how to integrate it easily into Moodle.  I might keep trying, but it also requires registration to save the images for more than 10 days, so that might also be a problem.

This is one I made in Bubblecaption.com.  It was easy to make, but the non-buble text options seem really limited (hard to put in titles, dates, etc. and make them look good).

Create your own caption

After reading about ways to link to video, I thought I would share one of the stranger movies from the Computer History Museum’s YouTube channel.  This film was made by IBM in 1965.  Things have changed.

What I love about the videos on the Computer History Museum YouTube channel is that they are a mix of primary sources, like this one, and great talks given at the museum by all kinds of people.  Of course I love just about every kind of history museum, but this one is clearly reaching out into the web 2.0 world with new types of exhibits and thinking about how people interact with museum artifacts.  I look forward to their big exhibit opening!

Well, I am not sure if I want to use this with my students, but it might work.

My loyalists and patriots poster is here: http://hpang.glogster.com/loyalistspatriots/

Back we go into a wonderful week of technology in the classroom.  But my preparation is starting with a little hardware learning.  I am using a netbook, an HP Mini to be specific.   So far I am really happy with it, although I am not so imporessed with the battery life.  I expected to need to make some typing adjustments, but so far that has not been an issue.

Everything I am struggling with, and it is all little stuff, is realated to things I love about a Mac that don’t seem to be there for Windows.  Although it is possible they are there, and I just don’t know all the tricks.  One of those is the two fingered scroll — how do I get this window to scroll without actually using the arrow on the scroll bar?  This is a big thing on a small screen.

I am also not that impressed with time to starting up from when I open the screen.  I guess I am spoiled by my mac that is essentially always on.

But as we think about computing solutions for students in the 2.0 classroom, I am compelled by the prices for these small computers and their weight (or lack thereof!).  And I think equality and ease of access may overwelm us soon, in a good way.  I think this one retails for about $400.  Not bad.

I started this blog last year, but I did not get far with it, and other things took over my writing time.  But as I look forward to the things I am going to do this summer, it seems to make sense to start writing here again.

Since I started out the week thinking about the humanware excerpt, it seemed logical to read the rest of the chapter tonight.  I want to start out just recording some quotations that jumped out at me as significant for Castilleja.  I have put the quotations in bold so that it is really clear what comes from our big green book and what are my comments.

“Faculty learning must precede classroom implementation, or else you’re going to have a mediocre program.” (57)  Those of us who are here this summer know this, but how do we harness our enthusiasm and have more and more faculty who want to take advantage of opportunities to learn and then integrate technology?

“To be alienated from the computer is to be disenfranchised in our society.  People should learn whatever they have to learn to feel that this thing belongs to them.  The most important thing that computer literacy programs can do for people is to give them the sense that they can be empowered by the machine.” Sherry Turkle, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit. (68) This fits in with issues of gender too.  I want our girls to feel like they own this thing, that they can learn to make it do what they want to do, not just do what someone else things they should do with it. 

This comment comes from the consulting analsys of another school, but it seems to hold some resonance for Castilleja, even though we probably are not this extreme anymore:  ”Everyone seems to be on his/her won regarding computer use.  What software matches what grade level, which packages are to be integrated with what curriculum topics seems to be for the most part based on individual choice.  Addressing this situation is the key next step for the school to move beyond phase 1.” (71)  Can I put in another plug for curriculum mapping here?  We need to see the big picture to figure it all out.

When Lynn was talking about the technology wiki for tech help at another school (it had a super cute name, which of course I can’t remember now), I was thinking maybe we (the Summercore 2008 group) should start a technology integration wiki to show the project and uses of technology in our classes.  We could put things together both by grade level and by software application, and give examples, discuss successes and problems, and generally put our own work out there to start the discussion.  What does anyone think?

The “personal trainer” program (starting on 120) seems interesting, and it would fit really well with the faculty leadership ideas that came out of the faculty advisory committee this year.  We had talked at some point about having people in different departments (or maybe at different grade levels) who were the “go to” faculty members on technology issues.  This seems to be exactly the kind of leadership we should be encouraging (and rewarding financially).  What would Castilleja’s 10 topics be?

We are a girls school, and the issue of gender equity should be part of our technology integration philosophy.  “gender equity means using technology proactively, being able to interpret the information that technology makes available, understanding design concepts, and being a lifelong learner of technology. The new benchmark for gender equity should emphasize computer fluency: girls’ mastery of analytical skills, computer concepts, and their ability to imagine innovative uses for technology across a range of problems and subjects.” (128)

Out of the many important points made in the section on “An Attempt at 20 Critical Questions (CQ)” two struck me as the most interesting to comment on here.

“F = Faculty training … this may well be the most important single step in moving a school forward… CQ: Has your school embraced any of these “out of the box” ideas: faculty incentives, faculty support, faculty pioneers, a dedicated computer faculty trainer?”  (130) Are we thinking about all the possibilities here?  Are we going to have enough tech skilled teachers when we move to the 1-1 program?  How many is enough? How will we know?

“K = KIS.. CQ: Yes, this is an oversimplification, but the KIS (”Keep It Simple”) paradigm for transforming a school involves four principles: budget, curriculum, shared leadership, and prioritizing faculty…CQ: Do the students graduate from your school as normal students (e-mail usage, Web usage, marginal skills with word processing, PowerPoint, etc.) or do they uniformly graduate with the computer proficiency skills that will allow them to be tech savvy citizens of the 21st century, i.e. typing at solid speeds, being able to manipulate the basic tools skillfully, acquiring visual and media literacy, creating Web pages, and understanding ‘big picture issues’ regarding honesty and Internet Safety?” (130)  Well, if this is not a LRP (long range plan) issue I don’t know what is!  As we define what we want to make sure our girls know for the 21st century, how are we making sure that the technology part is front and center for some of the discussions?

I think I have rambled enough now.

Notes Wed. June 25

Summercore

Google Earth

Uses in class – tour of DC trip, extension with air quality overlay (Sarah), looking at a glacier in Chile.

New version includes street view – zoom right in to see the street.

Top – search

Bottom – layers, transparent overlays (changes all the time, they keep adding more)

Click on primary database to turn off all the layers.  Lynne recommends keeping street view turned on.  Weather is fun to keep on – this is in real time!  Doppler radar also, and conditions and forecast.

The more you zoom in the more information you can see from the layers.

When a big visible thing happens (flood, tidal waves) usually there is an overlay very soon to see the damage.

Boarders and Labels can be useful – good for political geography

Most interesting are gallery and global awareness layers – constantly being revised and added to.  There is a well known one on Darfur created by the USHM

You can turn on the layers one at a time, so you don’t have too much information.  You can do this on for tours you create or ones that other people create (she showed the Darfur example).

PLACES – this is the middle area.  This is where the guided tours will reside.  They are saved in kml –keynote markup language (because Google Earth was first created by a company called Keynote)  These tours are written in html, very little, but it is html

When you double click on a kml file it opens google earth.

Example – Odyssey.  Ironically he never went very far, he just traveled a lot – this might tell us something about his personality!

Press play and the tour will start.

In preferences, always check “Show balloon when tour is paused” (under touring)

You can also set “Tour Pause”  length – useful in class. Also in preferences.

Examples – guided tour of Paris as a scavenger hunt.  They had a number of eros to spend, and they had to go to a list of places, and things to do.  (eat, go to the movies, take the metro)  Then they had to blog about it in France. 

History example – Ancient Egypt and the Great Pyramids (teacher was reluctant, but said it was great).

Used the view to discuss why they built them where they did.

Then she used a tour done in Google Sketchpad of the Kind Tuts tomb

So how do you find these cool things that are already done?

Earth.google.com

Go to gallery (on the left)

The other way to find them is in regular old google – do an advanced search and search for a specific file type

But, there are two kinds of Google Earth files, kml and kmz

(a kmz file is a zipped kml file)

Example – baseball park with file type kml

When you find what you want you ctrl click and save link as

Google Sky – there are different layers for the sky (click Saturn on the top)